When belief slips away, some let it go and move on to other customs and habits, or fountains of inspiration, but some try to dance with the bull of unbelief for as long as they can. Years ago (middle school, when girls and armpit hair were all I thought about) that’s where I found myself after reading HL Menken’s Treatise on the Gods, which narrates the initial idea of religion to almost where it is now—a vast enterprise built on the backs of religiously dedicated patrons. Because of that little book that I found nearly demolished in the public library in Florence, Texas, I was spiritually ruined, even though I attended church until just two years ago. Sitting in pews, I could imagine how brutally beneficial it was to horde people into rows, and when the faithful spewed prejudices, I knew they knew not what they were doing. (I didn’t forgive them, though. You should never forgive anyone who speaks and doesn’t know why they’re talking, even if we’re all guilty of doing just that.)

Still, in the embrace of Hell and all its fallen angels, I did my best. I borrowed books from the First Baptist Church’s library, books displayed across from apocalyptic movies produced in the ‘70s, when rock ‘n' roll and anything other than America were villains. All the books contained the same subject matter: church doctrine, vague prophecies made into pop culture, hate, and above all, credulity. Even as an undergraduate I’d buy the books that I would overhear others talking about, which lead to too much Donald Miller as well as mega-church-published three-hundred-page tracts. And Paul, lots of Paul and Calvinism. Now, It’s nearly 2014, and I can barely remember anything from a single page of those books, even a single salient sentence that could have held salvation. (One of the preachers at the postmodern church I attended in college mocked my book stacks once, saying that the evangelical books were a waste of a brain. He was one of the four people who gave me Blue Like Jazz. Apparently, at the ripe age of twenty-six, he had it all figured out.) I don’t believe it’s my own fault, either. Years after I’ve read them, I still recall Millay's poems as well as Gandalf’s spells. Unless you’re steeped and hidden in a culture that looks forward to the end of the world, or champions one book above all books, you tend to forget about brimstone, dragons, and prophecies. You can never forget the bigotry, though. It gets in your bones.

Through all of that—between any and all of the Grahams, Hal Lindsay’s fiction and fictional non-fiction, the catholic Chesterton I'll always cherish, and the Barthian Bonhoeffer—there was CS Lewis. As of now, I think I love his brain but hate all but one of his books, which people tout to the point where they’re more important than the Holy Bible, but that’s only because his books are more beautiful and relatable. As theologically unsound as this reads, the people in my youth taught me that the Bible is indebted to Paul and the writings attributed to him, and Christianity can never repay CS Lewis for what he’s given the religion: he gave Jesus Christ a human face. And, as Menken said:

"Theologians are well aware, deep down in their hearts, that faith alone is not sufficient to make even half-wits believe in their mumbo-jumbo; they sense a need to sweeten the dose with such testimony as would convince any judge or jury." (Treatsie on the Gods, 264)

The Great Divorce, like all books, isn’t for everyone, but it most certainly is for people who believe that characters from reality TV speak for them and their religious faith. Coincidentally, that’s what baffles me about this current near-the-end-of-2013 nonsense: when we’re at the apex of humanity, people choose to rally behind a millionaire television character and his struggle to keep a job. Past that, it’s how unwilling people are to change themselves. They seem to want to keep their world as fictional as possible, to the point where love becomes hate; to the point where rather than delivering messages, they’d rather be hangmen. “We love you but we can’t accept you.” We won’t accept you! That loving misanthropy raised me, but CS Lewis saved me. But Mr. Lewis won’t help my cousin, though, who, a few years ago, came out to the people that he loved the most: his family. I can’t find him to follow up and see if he’s still breathing, mostly because he seems to spend his time living his life and hiding from his family. Numerous of my dearest friends no longer have family because their mothers and fathers refuse to live in what’s real. At the heart of all this, that’s what The Great Divorce taught me: being real, and the extreme pain that it causes upon yourself. If you’re not real, you might as well be a living ghost, never feeling or experiencing the thrilling disappointment and exhilarating bliss of breathing and sharing air with strangers and the challenges they offer.

When you are willing to experience reality, living life becomes painful and beautiful. The most salient sensation I can think of would be coming to terms with hate, and facing that part of yourself that you despise, and falling in love with it. Love, according to Lewis, is a sacred word, and the only way to find yourself in love is by realizing that you live in an imaginary house, and what protection does an imaginary house offer, anyway? (The Best of CS Lewis, Pg. 123) This peculiar enterprise of hate has been built up to be more than just a house, though: It’s an entire world, as well as an entire livelihood for some people, most pundits, and a few TV characters. To inhabit a world where what looks real is also reality is to pursue and fall in love with one thing: Truth. Truth, though, after Kierkegaard and postmodern Christians, is as relative as one tangerine to another. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is, (Pg. 173) but it falls fiercely and violently. It’s easy to not feel pain living with shiny false truths, pretending a man can’t passionately believe the anus of another man is a beautiful rose, or that gay children can spread their sexuality to other kids like chicken pox. But you will learn a new truth, and when it happens, your heels will be cut on real grass as you learn (Pg. 136) that anything of substance hurts when we’re not real with ourselves, and we’ve done nothing but mature deeper into hopelessness, and grow old into ghosts.

Allusions and assumptions, that’s what the living ghosts on earth believe in, even as the real world rains beautiful and refreshing drops of reflecting liquid, they’re like machinegun bullets that puncture flimsy beliefs and ghostly frames. (Pg. 146) Living ghosts, those who hope other people think for them and allow other people to speak for them, suffer worse than they’ll ever know by denying themselves what’s real—the lives and loves of others. Denying themselves Truth just a bit longer, even as the tiniest interaction is too much for them to handle, like lifting a leaf that seems to be tethered to the planet’s core. (Pg. 126) That’s what CS Lewis taught me: to love Truth, or at least to pursue it. He didn’t mean to, but he illustrated the perfect religion: the religion of humanity, no matter the sexuality. Television characters and people who rally behind them prove that it’s something else: the last refuge for savagery in a dying year.

After a few thousand people read a past post, I thought it was because I wrote about family and personal matters. Then I came to my senses and knew it was because of religion, even though there’s no shortage of religious stuff on the Internet, a place where God both dies in YouTube videos and hides in vibrantly insane and ancient Geocities accounts. There are thousands of other religious blogs, so why did strangers read and share mine?

Religious blogs, for the most part, present themselves complete with nothing else other than thankfulness for the monotonous: food on the table, gas in the tank, an eager lover, unbroken windows, safety from fellow humans. Instead of thanking years of education, economics coupled with good judgment, or everything the middle class expects, these blogs occupy the space so many dead grandmothers can no longer fill, and simply give thanks to another day, or kick around questions carefully framed in a belief system and ever ask: If I chunk my faith to the toxic breeze, what’s left to work with?

Most, after finding or losing religion can’t seem to stop talking about the change; they treat their new discovery like they’ve just discovered the spiked punch bowl of an orgasm, and act as if they were college sophomores who had just read Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United States, with enough passion to ruin any peaceful Thanksgiving by raving how the world should be. Though I’d rather talk about sexual tension between carnie folk in the shadows of a lion cage in the big top, I see that when religion is touched on, people will read a blog, or an article, or even love a sport star like it, or they, is something supremely important. And, once again: Why? That’s easy. It’s because religion is the supreme topic, even though there are alternative choices when it comes to religion, with alternative gods, which says something about humans more than it does about divinity—there are other blogs, and somehow I keep religious company more than most people who enjoy my lack of faith. Those are the people who read what I posted. I think it’s because people more than flirt with the idea of tettering past a few degrees of unbelief. Other people want more than what a god offers, which, at best, is a simple extension, or, at worst, a total replacement of personality. People know faith is simply agnosticism because it offers nothing but presumptions about the invisible and knowing the unknown, and after an AMEN, all that hangs above their heads is silence because faith only supports itself and fills the gap between evidence and the total lack of it. Those people are living an unlived life—someone else’s, and they know it; they’ll only examine it through someone else who is willing to sacrifice their nonexistent soul, because religious faith strives above all else to leave the faithful stagnate and inefficient when it comes to their own beliefs: circular and constantly at odds with secularism. There is no self-criticism in religion. The Dalai Lama can talk about how science advances humanity more than prayers do, but he will never drop the “His Holiness” prefix and tell a crowd of impoverished Tibetan legions that he isn’t god, and that they should strive and toil only to better this world for their children, because that’s the only chance at reincarnation and immortality that they really have.

There is no criticism in religion, there is only doubt that you failed the tenants, or that you should be inspired to drag society down with you, back to the the Dark Ages, when belief had power over life and dead, not just who wins at football games or what being brought the a modest September rain. I know people know this. They know the world isn’t a burden on them, but their beliefs are a burden on the world. Their ignorance is called God, and they know it, because a good God is the world of smart men and nothing more. If you speak up about this, though, the most religious who are emotionally closest to you either try to talk you off the ledge of a new experience, or attempt to murder you. It all depends on the stage in which the society you live in has poisoned itself with that smut called secularism. Mostly, though, people direct you to church leaders, or they direct the leaders to your front door or email account. Why? What makes them know God or His book better than you? At best, there’s only a difference in fundamental understanding, but never a total comprehension of the subject you flirt with rejecting because there is no gnosis. Claiming special knowledge is so anti-human that it could only be religious! Like the Internet, the real world is full of people who will tell other what to believe, what to do, and while grammar and sentences fail me, or rather, I fail them. I will be charitable enough to say that not many can read better than I can. And, at the end, that’s all one has: your own mind to goddamn Him or glorify Him, but He won’t speak unless someone else speaks for Him, and when you listen, that’s when you abandon reason, suckle at authority, and the problems of our world never end. After a nine hundred and twenty words, all this sounds like something that everyone has heard before, just like what’s found on religious blogs and in the mouths of religious people, or spewing from adamant Hell bound hell hounds. I’d rather say something new, something more than faith or disbelief, something human.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.They may not mean to but they do.They fill you with the faults they had,And add some extra, just for you.But they were fucked up in their turn,By fools in old-style hats and coats,Who half the time were soppy-stern,And half at one another’s throats.Man hands on misery to man.It deepens like a coastal shelf.Get out as early as you can,And don’t have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin - “This Be the Verse” My parents’ marriage has fallen apart. They’re both in their sixties, and instead of retiring to Del Webb Sun City’s tennis courts, or traveling anywhere outside of Texas, they decided misery. I only wish they had done it sooner. Or rather, I wish my mom had left sooner. Maybe then she could have gotten help instead of simply have more means to nearly disappear. She won’t travel, though; they never traveled. My mom was repeatedly raped as a child by her father and grandfather—two men of God, no less. It wasn’t them, though, it was Satan, as my dad now says, but we’ll get to that later. I don’t want to write this through the passionate hate of a non-believer—someone who doesn’t think that blame for pain or miracles can be issued out to the Almighty or his devilish, cartoonish creation—I want to write this to people who love other people: people who love humanity, because that has become my only religion. I wouldn’t want to deprive a person of their faith, but faith has deprived my family of their humanity. So, in my view, they have no religion I care for. “I've given up on your mother, but I haven’t given up on God.” That’s what my father assured me yesterday morning over a McGriddle and a large Diet Dr. Pepper, the perfect breakfast combination. All I did was nod. I kept my left hand and wedding band over my mouth. I know more than few people would overhear what my dad said and hear nothing but beauty: a man of God. I heard apathy. A lot of people would read that and see that I missed the point of a man’s faith, but he has no faith; he has a platitude and verbal reassurance. My dad went on to talk about freewill. “Do you know what that is?” he asked me. “It’s either accepting Jesus or not accepting Him.” No other choices? No other definitions? Well, I think I believe in freewill, at least much more than I believe in God. They are both equally artificial, though. There just aren’t many choices in our world, granted there are more than simply belief or un-belief; Heaven or Hell—thought I’m sure there are a few secular believers who have transcended their own doctrine’s dichotomy. Choices do expand: the more you chose, the more choices you’re faced with, but that goes without saying since it’s now a science fiction trope in every movie about time travel. If there is any philosophy I could possibly follow, it’s uncertainty, and I hope I’ve never pretended to be anything else—recently, at least. Because at one point I think I could sit on my dad’s side and say that my mom rejected Jesus Christ because she won’t stay with my dad. But I could only have said that a long, long time ago. The only truth is my mom won’t stay with my dad because she is delusional after decades of prayer, hundreds of hours Christian couples meetings, receiving nothing that resembled therapy, and certainly not because “Satan has ahold of her!” as my dad proclaimed halfway through his breakfast pancake/sandwich hybrid. In his version of my mom’s story, Satan controls everyone at some point. Rapists: Satan. Runaway moms: Satan. Families are Satan, fathers and grandfathers. But what about husbands who don’t help? Incompetence isn’t satanic, I guess. But what happened to freewill? You can’t hold to a philosophy if you can become possessed by some sort of demon. This is where I’ll do my absolute best (a test to myself) to write maturely and honestly about this sort of horseshit. There is no Satan. It’s great fiction and a compelling reason to tether your eternal soul to eternal goodness, if you’re a Christian, because ancient Jews only thought of him as being who tested the faith of the faithful: God’s chosen people. He is an archetype adopted from ancient Zoroastrian/Persian religion. But that doesn’t fit for my father who maintains “He’s the reason your mom left, just like he’s the reason for pornography, homosexuality, roleplaying games, Hormel meat, and epilepsy. But God can work on me and He can save her.” Here’s where some sort of determinism comes into play. My mom was fated to be ruined because of what was done to her; any type of freewill has never existed for her. Of course she wanted a family, but after we grew up and finally left, she had nothing, and living with the memories of a family were something she just couldn’t do. Bad things = Satan. That’s bad math that deprives you of reality—there’s nothing that resembles freewill to be found there. There’s just an excuse that will stop you from facing what’s actually happened. There could be hope that the fallout won’t be so bad, though. That God will be there, and I’m sure there’s Biblical poetry to back that up that makes others feel good, but that doesn’t do anything to help a woman who’s suffering through her own unrecognized mental breakdown, does it? In fact, it’s that exact same mindset that aided in my mom’s maturity into madness. I thought we had freewill? That was what ran through my head like a squirrel on amphetamines as my dad said, “All she needs is to be saved, and then I’ll have my wife back.” All he needed to do was try. Now, I don’t blame my dad for my mom’s mental health, but he did hold to hope as opposed to helping. He didn’t try because he thought God has the power to start and stop: he thinks God is a constantly running river that can change its own streams. In reality that is the inconstancy that turns people away from any higher power. It even hinders a person’s logic. Praying to God that your wife is healed isn’t the same as demanding that He stop rape from happening. Prayers miss the point. They’re not meditative and nowhere near as cathartic as simply unpacking our ugly problems. Praying is smoking under stress: it’s a habit. Does each one of us need help? Yes! Does each one of us need saving? Yes, but not by a transdimensional spirit. We need to save each other. This isn’t a call for blind altruism, but a proclamation of optimism that family members will recognize when they have harmed or warped a loved one—or to fix that happened in the past. Now, I’ve alluded to mental health a few times already, so let me say this: I know my mom isn’t well, and she never has been well. After meeting other moms all my life, other women, and growing up, I know she’s deteriorating. She’s never been well. Her mother, my Nana—a terrible self-given nickname that I can’t shake, was thankfully put into a home about this time in her life, after she began to exhibit signs of dementia—or satanic control. She has no freewill, either. Even her diapers are picked out for her. Even if it’s a small amount of freedom, I want my mom, and any other person, to live a full life. But for my mom, I want her to find help. I don’t want her to because God’s finger puppet to make one man happy—satisfied, safe, accustomed. Families are Satan. I said that not too long ago, just a few paragraphs ago, and for me it’s still true. I never wanted, or even thought, I could get married. Like Philip Larkin’s poem said, my mum and dad fucked me up. They’re the role models to thank. But it was up to me to change. It’s difficult not being the person I was raised to be, I’m happy to say. It wasn’t secularization that warped me at a young age, it was a Godly family. I wouldn’t want that to be an excuse, though. I want it to be something I accept and a truth that makes me examine myself deeper, right into all those crannies I pretend doesn’t exist on my bodies—the ones we each pretend no one else sees, even when were naked. I want to talk to myself and my wife just so I can face myself. Love those you love because you love them, but know although you love them, they could be suffering, not because of your love, but because of themselves and their past, their present, and what could happen to them tomorrow. So say something. Rape isn’t dinner table conversation, but there are thousands of other opportunities to do your duty to the human that you love. Don’t leave it up to God. He’s an achievement of fiction, so He’s a failure in the real world. If you do use God has an adhesive, as my dad did, the one you love could stick around. You could even love them more because you think they’re healed; you can even start a family with them, but that doesn’t stop the suffering. After decades together, they could go, and fuck up more people than just you. For those who believe in God, love and trust are two different things, I’m sorry to say. Treat God like a crazed mother: leave nothing to chance. Fix yourself by yourself; be better for yourself. If you have a family that’s on the verge of no longer being something that resembles what’s photographed and hung on hallway walls, face it. If it’s obesity, addiction, a horrible past or a sad present, money management, or even a stolen childhood, it’s all up to you to spit in the face of determinism, of those who say that the devil is at work in person’s failures, or that chance and good fortune are only up to God. Be a person’s miracle, you have the freewill to do so.

This Easter morning I've read some banned literature at sunrise: something more entertaining than watching Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, a movie so violently pop and poppishly violent that it should feature Holy Ghostface Killah on backup vocals, whatever that means.

Thirty-thousand people are sitting just five miles away from me in their Easter Sunday best, girls looking like Easter eggs and little boys happy with their thumbs or doodling on donation cards while their parents open their tilled souls and clean ears to hear from a real pro: a guy has his own verb and who is known for giving God all the end zone glory.

Tim Tebow is speaking at church in Georgetown, Texas today. It’s on the Drudge Report and on the hearts of every Southern Christian who wishes they were in another pew this morning. Without sounding too pessimistic, I don’t like celebrities. I think there’s more talent than Hollywood has ever offered, or what is found on any sports field, in unpublished, uncannonized or unrecognized works of art that we’ll ever know about. But people don’t want work at appreciating something or someone, they want the complete package. People want heroes who can prop them on their shoulders and, at the same time, heroes that their fans can wear on their sleeves or on jerseys. Our stars are meant to likeable and honorable and to be remembered for generations. I’ll happily sound pessimistic, though, when I say that I don’t like Easter Sunday. I’ve survived a few so I think I can comment on the platitudes and regurgitated boredom. But some people really like it, such as the pastor for the church that Tim Tebow is speaking at.

“Obviously it's our Super Bowl," said Joe Champion, pastor at the Celebration Church. "Easter is the resurrection of Christ, which we celebrate in our faith. We feel like it's going to be a testimony to the community. We want it to be a family event…There will be the sacredness of Easter. It's not a Tim Tebow show. It's not about a celebrity. There's really only one celebrity that we are going to honor and highlight.”

The minister also states that the Tebow camp selected the church. Selected. Off season is this athlete a traveling circus? Now, I have to ask, why is he speaking? Can I speak? Can you speak on such a sacred morning? Can any one of us play in God’s Super Bowl? Most believers, I believe, would admit that Easter Sunday is rehearsal from years and decades past. Community? It is only good because Tim Tebow is famous?

Easter is the same Super Bowl over and over, no matter who speaks. One gospel will be picked to eliminate those nasty post-mortem contradictions. This is not a critique of faith, just commentary on sheep who are in search of any shepherd. There is nothing new, which, coincidentally, is what Samuel Johnson said about John Milton's "Lycidas." But this morning, I did want a religious experience. I did want Resurrection. So I had one. While some Tebowed this morning, I Miltoned.

Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear, I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude, And with forc'd fingers rude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. [ 5 ] Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due: For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew [ 10 ] Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. He must not flote upon his watry bear Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of som melodious tear.

Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well, [ 15 ] That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring, Begin, and somwhat loudly sweep the string. Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse, So may som gentle Muse With lucky words favour my destin'd Urn, [ 20 ] And as he passes turn, And bid fair peace be to my sable shrowd. For we were nurst upon the self-same hill, Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill.

Together both, ere the high Lawns appear'd [ 25 ] Under the opening eye-lids of the morn, We drove a field, and both together heard What time the Gray-fly winds her sultry horn,Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night, Oft till the Star that rose, at Ev'ning, bright [ 30 ] Toward Heav'ns descent had slop'd his westering wheel. Mean while the Rural ditties were not mute, Temper'd to th' Oaten Flute, Rough Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns with clov'n heel, From the glad sound would not be absent long, [ 35 ] And old Damœtas lov'd to hear our song.

But O the heavy change, now thou art gon, Now thou art gon, and never must return! Thee Shepherd, thee the Woods, and desert Caves, With wilde Thyme and the gadding Vine o'regrown, [ 40 ] And all their echoes mourn. The Willows, and the Hazle Copses green, Shall now no more be seen, Fanning their joyous Leaves to thy soft layes. As killing as the Canker to the Rose, [ 45 ] Or Taint-worm to the weanling Herds that graze, Or Frost to Flowers, that their gay wardrop wear, When first the White thorn blows; Such, Lycidas, thy loss to Shepherds ear.

Where were ye Nymphs when the remorseless deep [ 50 ] Clos'd o're the head of your lov'd Lycidas? For neither were ye playing on the steep, Where your old Bards, the famous Druids ly, Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, Nor yet where Deva spreads her wisard stream: [ 55 ] Ay me, I fondly dream! Had ye bin there — for what could that have don? What could the Muse her self that Orpheus bore, The Muse her self, for her inchanting son Whom Universal nature did lament, [ 60 ] When by the rout that made the hideous roar, His goary visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore.

Alas! What boots it with uncessant care To tend the homely slighted Shepherds trade, [ 65 ] And strictly meditate the thankles Muse, Were it not better don as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise [ 70 ] (That last infirmity of Noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious dayes; But the fair Guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears, [ 75 ] And slits the thin spun life. But not the praise,Phœbus repli'd, and touch'd my trembling ears;Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to th' world, nor in broad rumour lies, [ 80 ] But lives and spreds aloft by those pure eyes, And perfet witnes of all judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in Heav'n expect thy meed.

O Fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd flood, [ 85 ] Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown'd with vocall reeds, That strain I heard was of a higher mood: But now my Oate proceeds, And listens to the Herald of the Sea That came in Neptune'splea, [ 90 ] He ask'd the Waves, and ask'd the Fellon winds, What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain? And question'd every gust of rugged wings That blows from off each beaked Promontory, They knew not of his story, [ 95 ] And sage Hippotades their answer brings, That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd, The Ayr was calm, and on the level brine, Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd. It was that fatall and perfidious Bark [ 100 ] Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

Next Camus, reverend Sire, went footing slow, His Mantle hairy, and his Bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge [ 105 ] Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe. Ah! Who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge? Last came, and last did go,The Pilot of the Galilean lake, Two massy Keyes he bore of metals twain, [ 110 ] (The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain) He shook his Miter'd locks, and stern bespake, How well could I have spar'd for thee young swain,Anow of such as for their bellies sake, Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold? [ 115 ] Of other care they little reck'ning make, Then how to scramble at the shearers feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest. Blind mouthes! that scarce themselves know how to hold A Sheep-hook, or have learn'd ought els the least [ 120 ] That to the faithfull Herdmans art belongs! What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; And when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw,The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed, [ 125 ] But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothingsed, But that two-handed engine at the door, [ 130 ] Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.

Return Alpheus, the dread voice is past, That shrunk thy streams; Return Sicilian Muse, And call the Vales, and bid them hither cast Their Bels, and Flourets of a thousand hues. [ 135 ] Ye valleys low where the milde whispers use, Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart Star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enameld eyes, That on the green terf suck the honied showres, [ 140 ] And purple all the ground with vernal flowres. Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies. The tufted Crow-toe, and pale Jasmine, The white Pink, and the Pansie freakt with jeat, The glowing Violet. [ 145 ] The Musk-rose, and the well attir'd Woodbine, With Cowslips wan that hang the pensive hed, And every flower that sad embroidery wears: Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed, And Daffadillies fill their cups with tears, [ 150 ] To strew the Laureat Herse where Lycid lies. For so to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. Ay me! Whilst thee the shores and sounding Seas Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurld, [ 155 ] Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world; Or whether thou to our moist vows deny'd, Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, [ 160 ] Where the great vision of the guarded Mount Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold;Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth. And, O ye Dolphins, waft the haples youth.

Weep no more, woful Shepherds weep no more, [ 165 ] For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watry floar, So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled Ore, [ 170 ] Flames in the forehead of the morning sky: So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves; Where other groves, and other streams along, With Nectar pure his oozy Lock's he laves, [ 175 ] And hears the unexpressive nuptiall Song,In the blest Kingdoms meek of joy and love. There entertain him all the Saints above, In solemn troops, and sweet Societies That sing, and singing in their glory move, [ 180 ] And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. Now Lycidas the Shepherds weep no more; Hence forth thou art the Genius of the shore, In thy large recompense, and shalt be good To all that wander in that perilous flood. [ 185 ]

Thus sang the uncouth Swain to th' Okes and rills, While the still morn went out with Sandals gray, He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills, With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay: And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills, [ 190 ] And now was dropt into the Western bay; At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew: To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.

Springtime is a time resurrection, it always has been; that certainly is one of the co-opted tenants of Christian faith borrowed from paganism. That’s nothing to believe in, I know, but believe it because it’s fact. As John Updike once said that for as long as we have an appendix we’ll have Christian faith. Simply put, we’ll have faith until we evolve out of it. That’s remarkable honesty from a faithful man. Today is a morning that celebrates the artificial instead of the beautiful, which is where the poem, which is highly imaginative, resides.

Lines 165 through 181 focus on the comforting aspects of realizing that after death, immortality waits; sandwiched between those lines is where the narrator realizes “SoLycidassunk low, butmountedhigh,” (L. 172) The poem centers on lamentations of death in the same way that any Easter morning focuses on death. But both also focus on resurrection, or as Milton says, “Pastures new.” (L. 193)

And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills, And now was dropt into the Western bay; At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew: To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.

Both St. Peter and Phoebus (the Roman god Apollo) are blamed for the death of Lycidas, which is why the poem was banned by The Church of England for years. The Roman god says something intuitive about fame lines 79 through 85:

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to th'world, nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreds aloft by those pure eyes, And perfet witnes of all judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in Heav'n expect thy meed.

A good life is famous, it fulfills and gives meaning to life, not simply being famous; not simply being worshiped, but you don’t need to believe in that stuff to enjoy good poetry.